


sleep baby, sleep

by redstaronmyshoulder (CaptainAmelia22)



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brain Damage, Brainwashing, F/M, Kid Fic, Memory Alteration, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Red Room, Spies & Secret Agents, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:59:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2132829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainAmelia22/pseuds/redstaronmyshoulder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes never wanted kids.</p><p>But as is always the case when it comes to the Winter Soldier's dark past, the Red Room has other plans for their greatest weapons. </p><p>(Title from the Broods song.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleep baby, sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Still cleaning house in my drive and I keep finding nearly finished fics that aren't terrible. 
> 
> So some major editing and a somewhat decent ending later and here's another one for the Archive. 
> 
> -M

James Buchanan Barnes never wanted kids.

It was just one of those things in the end, something he’d leave to the good guys; he’d always known he’d make a horrible parent because his own family history didn’t have much to commend itself.  

His father had been an abusive drunk bastard who died at the wrong end of a boxing ring and his mother had been a shrew of a woman whose only interest in life was cheap whiskey and a stranger’s hand up her skirt.

They’d never found out how she’d died.

Probably in the gutter.  

Maybe with a shiv in her gut.  

It didn’t matter, really.  He didn’t want kids.

Parenting just wasn’t the Barnes way.  

So he’d leave it to the good guys.

To his best friend.

“I want to have kids one day,” Steve murmurs one night as bombs rain down on them and the world ends at the hands of madmen they really have no hope of stopping.  

His eyes are black in the shadows of the blue cowl, lost as he gazes at the hazy sky above them and James Buchanan Barnes finds himself hoping, despite everything, despite the world crashing to a chaotic end all around them-

Hoping Captain America will have his chance.

Will have his chance at a normal life he himself has no hope of ever achieving.

Has no wish of ever achieving-leave the white picket fence to the guys who know how to paint and the sweet-faced girl for those who’d know how to treat her right.

That is all he wants, hopes for, for himself.

It doesn’t matter, really.

Parenting just isn’t in his cards.

So he drinks and he smokes and he whores his way across Europe, always lost in Captain America’s shadow, and somehow it is a good life-or at least as good a life as he can hope to have, being a Barnes and all-and somehow they survive.

Until they don’t.

“You’d be a great father, Steve,” he murmurs as he swings his rifle over his shoulder and smears black paint around his eyes.  “You’re a good man Captain America.”

He plummets from an icy cliff days later, his fingers still warm from Steve’s grip and the wind cold in his ears-he grins up at the sky and closes his eyes, not even a little bit afraid of the cold grey inevitability of the water beneath him.

Some things are always meant to be, despite having a superhero for a best friend, and in the end it is always going to be the kid from Brooklyn who failed at saving him.

It’s just the way things are for James Buchanan Barnes.

“You’re a good man, Steve,” he whispers to the ghost of his best friend and the life he could have had.  “You deserve a good life.”

He always knew it would end this way for him.

 _That_ is the Barnes way.

He dies in 1944, in ice and blood, the last of the Barnes name.

And that is _exactly_ how it should be.

**

The Winter Soldier does not dream.

The Red Room does not _program_ their most skilledto dream.  

Yet, he always seems to find her.

His dream, the red rose, the ballerina.  

_The Black Widow._

“Do you love me zima?” she whispers, the woman who smells like half-remembered memories and blood, as she strokes the cold metal of his arm and kisses his downturned lips.  Her pale body gleams in the moonlight of her luxurious cage of a bedroom and she tugs him down upon the silk coverlet of her massive bed beside her. She wears nothing but a thin satin robe that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

If he’d ever had one to begin with.

The Winter Soldier has ever been a practical man.

Imagination is for the weak-the poets, the artists, the whores.  

He knows better than to dream.

 _That_ is Mother Russia’s way.

Cold silver metal fingers rise to cradle her flesh, to stroke and pinch in a caress as harsh as their homeland and she sighs as she rubs black paint from his eyes and eases holsters from his body.  

“Hold me, pet, like you used to when we were children,” she murmurs as she trails red lips down the thick column of his throat and runs dainty fingers across the bunched muscles of his shoulders.  He does not know how to hold her, does not remember ever being a child.

Does not remember anything but blood and cold and the faint scent of gunpowder on snowy nights.  

He does not remember holding her-

_He remembers standing between a man twice his size and a scrawny boy with blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes, full of an ill-placed hope he had never understood._

_He remembers fighting._

-her curly red hair spreads behind her head, as dark as the blood he revels in spilling, time after time for his masters, and she opens her arms only for him, only for the Winter Soldier with his blank shadowed gaze and his scars and his shattered memory.

“Come to me, my soldier,” she whispers as his metal arm flexes in the gloomy Russian moonlight and his guns fall unused to the floor beside her opulent bed.  Leather sighs and creaks under her fingers, under their fumbling bodies and it is like a prayer-a hopeless, worthless prayer.  She cups his cheek and kisses his lips gently, her voice a soft murmur in her cage of a bedroom.  “Come and love me.”

He says nothing, because there is nothing to say.

But he goes to her, allows her to touch him, to hold him, to _soothe_ him.

And somehow he manages to keep from dreaming.

The Winter Soldier is not allowed to dream, is not _programmed_ for something so foolish, but as he holds his red rose and kisses her and trails his fingers-metal and flesh-up her writhing body he finds himself hoping.

Hoping to wake from his blood and snow-filled nightmare.

“You are a good man, zima,” she whispers as he muffles his cry in her breasts and her body arches insistently into his, welcoming as if she were made only for him.  They move in tandem, their bodies responding together as if they are used to this dance, as if there was something more between them than these occasional moonlit trysts when her betrothed is gone for business.

As if...he can almost remember what they’d been like as children.

Scared.

- _I want to have kids one day-_

He groans and tries to stop from thinking of blue eyes lost in the shadows of a mask, tries to stop from thinking of a silver star shining in the uncertain light of artillery filling a starless night.

Tries to stop from _dreaming._

“Natalia,” he whispers as he thrusts himself viciously against her and his voice is harsh with pain, with fear.  “Natalia, please, help me.”  

She, the girl he thinks he loves but can’t ever remember from outside of these random trysts despite their own primal responses towards each other, simply murmurs in his ear.  

“You are a good man.”  

He cries out at that and curses himself and her for their stupidity but she only laughs, before kissing him and stroking his brown hair as he finishes.  She stretches, catlike, as he pulls free of her body after a long silent moment to gather his clothes and his weapons; his motions are jerky and clumsy in the post-coital exhaustion threatening to swamp him but her words echo through his skull.

Through his blood.

Finally, she sits up and wraps her arms around his chest and presses a kiss to the juncture of metal and skin in his shoulder.  “You deserve a good life,” she whispers as he slides from the shadows of her room and back to the streets of Stalingrad, back to the men who break them and fix them in equal turns.

_You are a good man.  You deserve a good life._

He tries to ignore the pain those words cause him.

Tries to keep from…

**

The little girl has no parents, no lineage, no _family._

She is simply an asset to be trained and broken and then, when she is big enough, deployed.

She is a weapon.

She is not worth loving.

They do not tell her the truth of where she came from, of who was supposed to love her.  They do not tell her that her parents are heroes and assassins, the nightmares of governments and the saviors of the innocents.  They do not allow her to wonder what is outside of her cage, who may be waiting for her out there in the world.  

They simply break her and break her and _break_ her _._

Again and again.

Every single day until she is ready to be set loose on the world.

“Comrade, what is your purpose in life?” her commanders snarl as she dances their dance and fights furiously to be free and finally forgets what it is to dream.  “What are you meant to do?”

Emotionless brown eyes, terrifying in such a young face, settle on her commanders as she is handed a gun and a mask and her lips curl in a tiny smile.  It is as close to emotion as she can get, even though she is barely free of her teens.

She is strong, she is brave, she is insane.

She is barely old enough to understand what it is they are doing to her.  

She simply _is._

An asset.  A soldier.  A beautiful woman with no memory and no sense of love or hope.  

He calls her Roza, her handler.  Her commanders call her Soldat.  No one mentions the irony of each name.  No one mentions the family she does not belong to, who once bore names much like hers.

They break her and keep their thoughts to themselves, hidden behind masks of indifference and hatred.  

They teach her to love her country, to obey Her orders, without thought and without regret.  They make her into the perfect soldier.

And ask her every day.

“Comrade, what is your purpose in life?”  

“What are you meant to do?”

“What are you going to do, child?” her handler asks every night when their commanders are gone and she is locked away into the shadows.  Somehow his question always follows her into sleep, no matter how desperately she tries to forget it.   

She straightens her spine, slides her mask into place and tucks her curly red hair absently behind her right ear.  She does not see the heavy glances exchanged between her handler and their commanders, she does not see nor would she ever understand the fear in their eyes. Then, as they wait to hear their greatest lesson fall from her lips, she turns her gaze to theirs and smiles.  

“Comrades,” she murmurs, her voice devoid of any inflection, any emotion.  “My only purpose in life is to do what my country asks of me.”  

Then she cocks the gun they have placed in her hand since she was old enough to understand it’s power and the sound is loud in the dark room they store her away in.  Store her and keep her and _freeze_ her.

She has no idea how broken she truly is.  

The perfect soldier.  

“Very good comrade,” they murmur as she is set loose on the world, a dark shadow with no family and no hope for love.  “Be brave Soldat and do your job well.”

As she creeps over the rooftops of Moscow, a silent shadow full of deadly intent and no second-thought, she wonders.

Wonders about the last question her handler always asks as he slips the cuffs from her wrists and makes sure her hair is tucked out of her eyes.  

“What are you going to do, child?”

His light grey eyes, full of some unnamed emotion always pierce through her armor, always shake her awake.  But she never has an answer for him.

For herself.  

She has no idea what she is going to do so she simply does what she is _supposed_ to, over and over and over.

And it breaks her.

And makes her.

And no one ever mentions the irony of her names and her lineage.

She wouldn’t understand, even if they did.

The Red Room does not allow for dreaming or hoping.

Especially in children.

Especially in the child of the their greatest creations.  
“My only purpose in life is to do what my country asks of me,” she repeats over and over.  

It is a hard lesson to learn and it has taken many years for it to stick, but it is a good lesson and it is what makes her whole.  Everyone needs something to learn, to fight for, to fight _against_ and those words are as good as any to such a perfect soldier.

But it’s not until she is sent to the West, sent to kill heroes, that she begins to question that lesson.

And begins to think seriously on what her handler always asks of her as he sets her free into the night.

_What am I going to do?_

Western shadows are far darker than the shadows of the East.

She has no idea how to fix herself.

**

They find each other, again and again, throughout the years.  

Somehow, they always end up together.

Broken toys with nothing but shadows, legends and blood to sustain them.  

“Do you remember the old days James?” she asks one night when they lay together in her bed and bright moonlight streams through the windows to trail their tangled limbs.  

Dark memory, barely remembered, threatens to overwhelm him and his arm flexes instinctively around her, almost as if he can still hear her screams as shadowed men sought to tear her from his side.

“No,” he says shortly as she strokes her hand over the warm metal holding her; she tries to spread his fingers, a game neither remembers playing but that always seems to occur when they end up in bed together.  A small smile darts across his lips and he lets her spread first one, then the others.  She hums happily at that as she tangles their hands together and she snuggles deeper against him, content for now, to be held in the safety of his arms.  

They fit together so perfectly, as if they were made for each other.  It’s something neither like thinking about.  

“I have dreams sometime,” she murmurs after a while and his eyes drift open; sleep is so very near to taking them and he sighs softly.  Her hair ripples with his breath and she snorts as she tucks it more securely behind her right ear.  “James,” she growls in mock irritation as he chuckles.  

“Sorry,” he murmurs as he presses a kiss to her neck, her warm scent washing over him as he does and his eyes close once more.  

A part of him hopes she won’t mention dreams again.

She does.

“Do you remember teaching me how to fight, James?” she asks doggedly and he knows without looking she’s frowning; he can almost picture the tiny wrinkle between her brows, that tiny puckering of skin that means she is trying to dredge up red-tinted memories of a by-gone era.

He rolls away from her, sliding his arms free of her body and he stands, naked and tense, in front of the windows of her tiny Queens bolt-hole she uses to escape Fury and Stark.  

He rolls his shoulder, the metal one, defensively and tries to…

Tries to keep sane.  

“No Natalia,” he growls to the moonlight streaming down around New York City.  “I don’t remember and I don’t want to.”

He doesn’t hear her come up behind him-she is the only one who can sneak up on him anymore.  The only one he lets his defenses down for.

Slender arms, far stronger than they appear, wrap around his waist and her fingers dig gently into the hollows of his hips.  Her lips press into the juncture of skin and metal at his shoulder and he can’t help a ghost of a smile from darting across his lips as he imagines her standing on her tiptoes to reach so high.

Memories, tinted in dingy moonlight and smelling of blood and gunpowder, wash over him and a small sound escapes his lips.  

It’s a groan.

The only sign that he admits to his past.

Their past.

“You were my greatest teacher, James,” she whispers as her fingers press into him and her lips trail gently over his scarred body.  “You can remember that, you know.  Can remember teaching me and loving me.  That won’t hurt you.”

He turns at that, safe in the circle of her arms, and raises his hands to cup her pixie-like face.  Red hair, curly and dark as the blood each has spilled more times than they care to remember, spills over his fingers and he brings a curl to his nose.

And breathes in her scent.  

She watches as his eyes close in reverence and her fingers tighten on his hips.  

“James.”

Her voice is gentle, soothing.  

A prayer.  

He kisses the curl and finally looks at her.

Brown eyes, shadowed with memories and half-forgotten fear, lock on emerald green as clear as the gems they resemble and metal fingers caress her cheek bones.  

“I remember you dancing,” he murmurs suddenly and she stills.  

They both know she never danced-that the memories of the ballet are nothing but the Red Room’s manipulations-but he can’t help feeling happy at the memory of her in a black leotard dancing in front of a wall of mirrors.

He is happy with that memory and in some ways it makes them…

Metal fingers tighten along the base of her skull and he pulls her tighter into his chest.  She stiffens, instinct raging for a brief moment within her, but then she is pressing herself into him and her eyes close as she allows him to hold her.  

“I remember throwing you on a mat and you spitting curses at me in Russian,” he whispers in her ear, his lips brushing the hollow of her ear and she shivers as his mouth brushes her skin.  “You were always so mad at me, the little girl getting beaten by the one armed freak.”

A choked laugh escapes her lips and she turns her face slightly into the cold metal of his shoulder.  “I remember that,” she says with a smile and kiss to the juncture that will always be scarred and twisted.  “You taught me patience and how to fight those far bigger than I.”  Another kiss and her hands tighten around his hips.  

Before he can stop her she kicks his legs out from under him and throws her hand into his shoulder, into the scarred mass of broken nerves leading to metal and he bites off an unintelligible curse as his arm screams in pain and he falls heavily to the floor of her tiny bedroom.

“Natalia!” he barks as she straddles him and a curtain of blood-red curls spill over her shoulder to curtain their faces.  He reaches up to cradle her face and their eyes are sparkling, even as she stops his hand and presses a kiss to the scarred metal of his palm.  

“But you know what the greatest lesson you taught me was, James?” she asks, each word punctuated with a kiss to his fingers.  When he simply shakes his head she chuckles and leans in for a kiss to his lips, which he surrenders whole-heartedly.  

“You taught me how to win,” she murmurs against his lips and her eyes are dark, dark with something like memory.  Something like love.  

Something…

“Thank you for that.”  

**

“Don’t move.”  

He follows her to the roof.

The girl one man calls Roza and a group of faceless monsters call Soldat, tries to keep from panicking at the realization that she is not alone in the freezing wind beating around her; no one has ever been able to outrun her before.  No one has been _fast_ enough to even keep up for a minute.  

Except for this man.

This man with the metal arm and the warm brown eyes.  

And a deadly skill with a butcher’s knife.

She sneers at the thought and tries to not breathe too deep.  Her entire body thrums with energy, with mission-fueled adrenaline she’s been trained to keep under control

She’s failing on that lesson tonight though.

On most of her lessons, really.

 _Trapped_ , she thinks idly, the panic she’s starting to feel tinting her words in red. _So what now Soldat?_

Her boots scrape across the ledge, carefully, and she frowns into the cold wind whipping around her.  All of her senses are aimed at the only target she has utterly failed at killing and she still has no answer for herself.  

No answer for her handler.

No…

The man moves like her, like the men who trained her.

Like the legends she has endeavored to become.  

“Step off the ledge.  Now,” the man snaps from the shadows of the access doorway she’d run through mere seconds before and she shivers at the coldness in his voice.

The slight accent she can just detect around the edges of his words.  

She does not step off the ledge.  

The City sparkles beneath her feet, lit like a night sky and for a long moment she simply watches the ant-sized people rushing about below.  They are all so innocent, so clueless as to what happens hundreds of stories above them.  She wonders briefly if she fired the gun strapped to her hip, into the man’s chest, if those teeming ants below would hear.  

She wonders if they would care.

Honestly, she envies them.  

She envies their innocence and their ease.  

She envies them their humanity.

Her hair, wild now that it is no longer contained by her hood, blows about her face and she thinks for a moment about what her pale-eyed handler asked her before this impossible mission started.

_What are you going to do?_

She has no idea.

She’s never not completed a mission before.  

Never not...won.

Blood drips down her ribs from a cut her target left on her body but she pays it no mind.  It’s half-healed anyway-within moments it will be nothing but a pink edged scar and within a few hours her pale skin will be unmarked.  The stickiness of the blood congealing in the waistband of her pants is a minor discomfort though and her nose wrinkles in disgust.    

The faint scrape of a heel on the rough concrete of the building’s roof comes from a few feet behind her and she tenses, every sense once more aimed at the monster at her back.  Her arms, suspended a bit at her sides, begin to tremble and she takes a deep breath, wincing as she does.

She concentrates on the man she was sent to kill and she tries to ignore the question swirling in the back of her skull.

_What are you going to do?_

She has no idea.

The faint click of weaponry shifting in wide palms can be heard over the rushing wind and her eyes follow the path a tiny taxi takes as it wends it’s way down the avenue below her.  

“Do you know what I love about this city?” she asks, in Russian, in her blood tongue.  There’s another scraping sound at her back, as if the man stalking towards her halted in the process of creeping closer and straightened in surprise.

 _Good_ , she thinks as she balances on the balls of her feet and lets the sparkling lights beckon her downwards.   _He does not know what to expect from me._

“What do you love?” he asks just before she lets herself fall and for a moment she does not realize he has spoken in the same tongue as she.  

She glances at him from over her shoulder and murmurs as his eyes widen through the tangled brown hair tumbling across his forehead, “I don’t have to look up to see the stars.”  

And then she falls.

“NO!” the man she was sent to slaughter shouts in horror and his voice is her nightmare.

Her fear.

She falls, limbs spread and hair streaming behind her like a banner and for a moment she lets herself pretend that she is flying; laughter spills from her lips as she closes her eyes and listens to the wind roaring in her ears and for a moment…

For a moment she is free.

And then reality hits once more and a bullet slides past her left ear, barely missing her.  She snarls and twists just enough so she is a smaller target and without a second thought she lands cat-like on a balcony twenty stories from the roof.  The girl hisses as her ankle twists beneath her but she straightens quickly, unfazed by the pain wrenching up her leg; with an assessing glance above to the ledge she just dropped from, she smirks before easing slowly through the balcony doors and back into the glittering tower she was deployed to, hours before, for this impossible mission.  

Within seconds, before she even reaches the doorway leading out into the hallway, her ankle is whole and the pain nothing but a distant memory.  

She presses a hand to her ribs absently and that pain is gone as well.

She is whole, solid and lethal once more.

Except for that niggling doubt, in the back of her skull.

And the memory of a hulking shadow slipping onto her ledge, silver metal glinting in the night-light of this Western city she wishes she could see more of.  She shivers but keeps moving, desperation fueling her now that her adrenaline has fled.  

A faint thud echoes from the balcony she’s just scrambled from and her skin begins to crawl at the realization that she may not survive this mission.

That there are others out in the world who are…

Stronger than her.

Better made.

It’s a frustrating realization to have so late in this mission.

“What am I going to do?” she whispers out loud as she rushes unseen down the opulent hallway of the tower and heads desperately towards the emergency stairwell climbing the side of the one hundred story tower that she knows will lead directly to the ground floor and the avenue she stood above just moments before..

“Die,” snarls a voice directly behind her and her scream is cut short as a fist closes around her throat and another hand, this one cold metal and decidedly not normal, tangles in her hair.

The wall trembles as she is thrown headfirst against it and a curse slides free of her lips as brown eyes, pitiless and blank meet hers and metal fingers, amazingly strong, begin to squeeze.  

“Now,” he hisses into her face as he wrestles her bodily into the floor and slams his knee into her chest.  

“Go to hell!” she gasps as her vision begins to spot and her lungs heave beneath his touch. He’s too strong for her, too _strong_ and he’s the only thing that’s ever beaten her.  Ever.

“You first,” he whispers, this time in English but she can still hear the accent.

Can still feel his training in his hands.

In the metal and the flesh.

She can see it in his eyes-he’s going to kill her and enjoy it when he hears that familiar crackle of bones crushing beneath his palm.

She knows him as well as she knows himself.

He does what she would do if their roles were reversed.

He slams her head into the floor once, twice, three times.

She blacks out.

But not before she hears a woman’s voice gasp, “ _James_?!”

The target curses once more, viciously, in Russian and she would have been impressed.

If she wasn’t lying, unconscious, on the floor of a multi-billionaire’s tower in New York City.  

With two ex-agents of the Red Room standing over her with wide-eyed looks of horror in their eyes.  

She would have…

Known what to do.

If she hadn’t been beaten for the first time since she was created.

“We have a problem,” the target snarls as he hauls her limp body into his arms and turns to face the only woman in the world he admits to being terrified of.  For. “Assemble the team Natasha.”  

She simply nods and tries to keep her eyes from drifting over the red curls spilling from his arms.

“James, who…” she whispers uselessly, before turning to make the one call that will change them forever.

**

Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter are sleeping, curled together in their large and expensive guest bed, when they are called to assemble.

Both groan as first his and then her phone begins to vibrate with the assembly message and he sighs before curling his fingers through her tangled blonde hair, lying beside his cheek.

“Just once, I’d like to be able to sleep the night through without interruption,” he groans as she reaches from the safety of his arms for her phone, glowing on the bedside table, beside his.

She chuckles as she opens the message and kisses his fingers before easing free of the blankets and him.  “Captain America doesn’t need sleep,” she murmurs as she tosses him his phone and his drawers, a crooked grin on her lips as he catches both easily, without opening his eyes.  “Come on Rogers.  Romanoff needs us on the 80th floor.  Get your ass out of that bed.”  

He groans and takes a moment to enjoy watching her move around their guest bedroom, then as she jerks the blankets from his body with a smirk and curse, he finally rises.    

But he is still frustrated.

Still…

It’s the night of Tony Stark’s engagement party, the one night they are all together in one place, the whole team, under one roof.

The one night they have let their guard down, let themselves celebrate.  

It has been a long time since they’ve had the chance.  

He wonders why he’s surprised disaster has found them on this night of all nights.  

He wonders what it would be like to really retire.

To hang up the shield.

To be _normal._

To actually have that family.

And the white picket fence.

To not be _constantly needed_ to fix the mistakes others make and take.  

He wonders.

And follows Sharon from their room.

“Where are the others?” he asks as he slips quietly through the doors of an unused conference room on the 80th floor of the Tower.  His shield is at his back but he is not in uniform.  

Natasha glances at him, her green eyes blank, lost in the shadows of the dimly lit room and he stills instantly.  Every nerve in his body seems to fire in response to her tense silence and he knows.

Knows something horrible has happened.

On the one night they had the chance to be themselves.  

He should not be surprised.

But when Bucky comes through the conference room doors a moment later and Steve catches sight of the crumpled figure he holds and the swinging red hair spilling over the silver metal of his arms, he realizes…

Even heroes can be surprised in the end.

“We have a problem,” Bucky snarls into the shadowed room, to the three people in the world he can still trust.  

He drops the girl on the dark granite conference table and the two blondes wince at the sound her skull makes as it strikes the surface; Bucky does not react.

He simply clenches his fingers and tries to resist the urge to press the muzzle of his gun to the girl’s temple.

He tries to keep from panicking.

To keep from remembering a bloody battlefield.

And a moonlit bedroom.

He glances at Natasha, who is doing her level best to keep from running, to keep from sliding completely into shadow; she does not look away from the girl lying limply on the conference room table and he knows if she could see the eyes the girl has…

She’d disappear for good.

His fingers clench, the faint sigh of metal contorting and shifting the only sound in the room.

And then he turns to Steve, who is staring at the girl with a bewildered expression on his face and consideration in his eyes.

The man’s fingers tighten around the shield’s edges and all four in the room tense as the very air in the room seems to vanish.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers as his head begins to pound and he wishes he was back, safe in his bed, with Sharon curled into his chest once more.  “Who is she?”

Bucky shifts, his eyes darting from the girl to Natasha once more and then he barks out a short laugh and runs his fingers through his hair, nervously.

All can see he’s barely holding on, barely keeping it together and Steve realizes as his best friend shifts closer to Natasha and their fingers tangle together, that he’s holding on for her.

Holding onto his sanity.

Holding back his red-tinted memories.

Holding back the shadows.

“She’s-she’s mine, Steve,” he chokes out as the silence thickens and Steve feels an urge to scream begin to grow in the back of his throat; this, this is a nightmare none of them are prepared for and he realizes as Sharon stiffens at his side and Natasha pales that he might not be able to fix this mistake.  

That he may not be able to save them this time.

Bucky’s eyes close and his fingers tighten desperately around Natasha’s as he watches Steve’s eyes darken and his jaw tighten.  Her eyes close as well and she swallows as she turns into chest, turns away from the cold gazes of their friends’.  Bucky wraps his free arm around her and finally opens his eyes so he can gaze at the monster that was sent to destroy him, by any means necessary.

 _Mission complete_ , he thinks idly as Natasha trembles in his arms and Steve’s frown deepens.  

“She’s my daughter,” he finishes lamely as the girl begins to stir and Steve’s shield hums as it slides firmly onto his forearm; the girl curses weakly in Russian, her word counterpoint to the vibranium singing in the moonlight and Sharon sighs as Steve steps forward to neutralize their newest nightmare.  

Bucky laughs and presses his forehead into Natasha’s hair, for the moment content to simply hold her, comfort her, _soothe_ her.

For the moment content to let Steve fight his battles for him.

“And I didn’t even want kids,” he whispers so only she can hear.  

Natasha smiles weakly into his chest as vibranium hums at her back and one of Tony Stark’s conference tables groans in protest to the beating it takes as Captain America strives to control the one thing in the world he never thought he’d ever see.

James Barnes’ daughter.

The Winter Soldier’s creation?

“She fights like you, Buck,” he snarls as she struggles wildly in his arms and Sharon makes a phone call, her back turned to them and her finger stuck in her ear.

Bucky can do nothing but smile bitterly into the shadows and hold Natasha a little tighter.

“She fights like her mother,” he whispers into the red spilling over his vision and only two people in the room notice the faint accent coloring his words.  

Only two…

Cold laughter spills from the girl’s lips as she is smashed once more into the floor of the tower she was deployed to, long hours before and she spits in the faces of her enemies.

“Go to hell,” she snarls in English as pitiless blue eyes gaze into hers and a strong arm, twice as strong as she, is pressed into her throat.  “All of you.   _GO TO HELL._ ”

An odd humming is the last thing she hears before cold metal connects with her temple and she is sent once more into red-rimmed darkness.  

 _She’s got the Barnes’ temper, too, I see,_ a voice murmurs outside of her consciousness and then silence finally takes her.

It is welcome.

It is safe.

She still has no answer for her handler.

For herself.

She sleeps.

**

She drowns in red.  

“What are we going to do James?” she asks quietly in the early hours of the morning when they finally get a chance to catch their breath.

Finally get a chance to be alone together.

With this girl who is more than a throwback of a by-gone era.

There is three inches of bullet and radiation proof glass between them and the medical bay SHIELD has set aside for this particular anomaly.  They are deep in the bowels of a helicarrier, far away from the prying eyes of the Avengers and Tony Stark’s condescending tut-tutting.  Steve and Sharon are the only ones who know where they’ve gone.  

Natasha can see them standing at the end of the hallway, their backs turned in their direction and she knows that nothing will get through them.  Not even Tony Stark, with his smarmy charm and alloyed suit.

She glances up in time to see the muscles of James’ jaw clench at her question but he doesn’t answer her; instead he mutters to himself in an angry mix of Russian and English and before she can stop him he punches the lock set just to the side of the pressurized med-bay’s door and he slides through into the girl’s room.

She rushes after him, with her own curse spilling from her lips, and barely makes it before the door locks after her.  “James,” she hisses as she stretches out a desperate hand to catch his elbow.  The metal is cold under her fingers, stiff.

Hard.  

Everything about him is hard and she knows…

Knows he’s coming apart at the seams

Knows he sees nothing but red.  

They stand at the foot of the bed, this new nightmare neither were prepared for and her head echoes with the ghosts of a long lost life.  Of a life she never really _lived._

But still remembers.

Somehow.  

“She-she looks like you,” she whispers into the heavy silence surrounding them, anything to break the stillness and it is the wrong thing to say.

His arm tenses under her hand, the metal stiffening impossibly and the tips of her fingers feel as if they are freezing.  Unbidden, memories rise out of the red fog in her mind and she sees him once more.

As he was, when they were both broken and lost to the hands of monsters.  

His eyes, dead and cold, stare down at her and his hair, no longer shorn short, is long and matted.  He has the appearance of a mad-man, of someone with absolutely nothing to lose and she shudders.  

Without realizing, she whispers something she has not said out loud to him in more than forty years.  “пожалуйста, моя любовь, быть добрым.”  The words fall unbidden from her lips, spilling as easily over her tongue as if it has been mere moments and not years since last she spoke the language of her blood.  The words are harsh, cold, metallic tasting.

But they are healing.

Something she would murmur to a wounded bear who came to her on moonlit nights with no memories and very little humanity.  It is something she would whisper to them both as they lay together and tried to find their sanity in each other’s arms.  

_Please, my love, be kind._

The red fades from her gaze and her James is as he should be-the Winter Soldier is gone and Bucky Barnes stands beside her once more; his shortish brown hair tumbles over his forehead, almost into his eyes and as she strokes it back, she thinks idly it’s time for her to give him a haircut.  

The only thing that remains of the monster is the metal of his bionic arm and even that is a mere ghost of the red rimmed freak he no longer remembers.  

Or tries to keep from remembering.  

“I will try to be kind,” he whispers, in English and his brown eyes are terrified.  Lost.

She smiles gently and cups his cheek.

“I know James,” she whispers as she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth before moving closer to the bed and the body lying there.  “You are a good man.”  

He trembles at her words and tries to keep from drowning in red.

Eventually he sits beside her, his motions stiff and jerky, but she does not tease him.

She simply stretches out a hand for his and finally he relaxes in his chair beside hers.  Their eyes do not leave the unconscious figure of the monster that has been sent to destroy him and neither speak.

They simply wait.

And try to keep from drowning in red.  

**

They say the trigger.

She surges to life, her body arching off the stiff mattress she’s strapped to and she screams a curse in their faces.

She did not want to wake up.  

She did not want to live.

_I failed.  I failed.  I. **Failed.**_

She has no right to life.

No right to breathe.

No right to-

“Stop her, stop her!  She’s trying to smash her head against the railing!  Hold her down-”

“-what did I say?  Barnes, what did I say?!”

“-get out of here Stark!”

“-James, you have to keep her still-”

-call herself a soldier any longer.

“ _KILL ME NOW_!” she screams in the faces of her captors, in the faces of the men who do not know the right words to say, the right way to fix her.  

She surges off of the mattress, the muscles in her arms and chest straining and bulging as she struggles with their hands and the many words they shout in her direction but they are too strong for her.

Too strong.

“Kill me, _please,_ ” she sobs as the men continue to shout and her body struggles with the trigger someone let slip without thinking about what it would do to her.  “Please, just finish it.   _Kill me._ ”

They do not kill her, they do not fix her, they do not end her nightmare.

They are monsters.

Monsters-monsters-monsters.

Her lungs heave, her teeth clench and someone says the trigger again, the word that breaks her, makes her.  

 _Saves_ her.

She screams, her throat raw and her mind is a whirl of images, of nightmares tinted in red, smelling of blood and gunpowder.  She does not know how to stop the images, does not know how to remember who she is.  

 _What_ she is.

There is too much chaos.  

No one knows how to fix her.  

She cries, pleads in Russian, in English, in Chinese, in French-in any language she does not remember ever learning-desperate for them to understand her that she is _burning._

That she deserves to die.

“ _Kill me, please, please, please…”_  she sobs over and over as her body struggles to right itself and men stronger than she wrestle with her bonds, strapping her down once more, to the hard mattress they have set aside just for her.  “ _Please!_ ”

And then someone is pushing the hard hands aside and is gently touching her, holding her, _soothing_ her.

“No,” a woman with green gemstones for eyes and blood for hair, murmurs through the chaos and she stills at the sight of bitter understanding and cold kindness in the woman’s eyes.  “ _сон_ ,” the woman says as she smooths the palm of her hand over her eyes, forcing her eyelids to close and her body to ease.  “ _сон._ ”  

Red grips her and she fades once more into darkness.

Into peace.

Into unknowing.

She no longer burns.

**

James Buchanan Barnes never wanted children.  

It was just one of those things in the end, something he’d leave to the good guys; he’d always known he’d make a horrible parent because his own family history didn’t have much to commend itself.

The Winter Soldier had had children, after all, children that he had enjoyed destroying.  

How could a man like him be trusted with children?  How...

He used to think of the men he trained as something like children-easy to break, to mold, to loathe.  They were the dark chaos he hated and loved, the masterpieces of a genius.  

He taught them to fight, to kill and to obey but in the end they were always their own monsters.  

Children.  

Cut from the same mold but with their own flaws their handlers would have to learn to adapt to.  

He never wanted children but the Red Room gave him children anyway.

Each as horrific as the next and each as broken as him.  

“I don’t remember her,” he murmurs on the night they discover the girl he suspects is his...product?

He can’t say the word _child_.

It’s too...trite, for what lies before him, shackled and sedated; she’s peaceful now, her face relaxed almost to the point where it looks like she is smiling in her sleep and his fingers twitch at the sight of a deep red curl drifted across her lips.

But he won’t touch her-not until they know more on just what, _who_ , the ghosts of the Red Room have sent them.    

Besides-that _word_ is one of the words Stark blabbered before the girl woke.  

He tries to not think of triggers.  

Tries to not think of glass tanks and wires drifting from pale skin and broken memories piecing together into some macabre form of a history.  

Fails.  

He doesn’t say anything that may set off the bomb ticking away behind her closed eyes and doesn’t tuck her hair behind her ear like he longs to.  

Natasha is curled into her chair, her chin propped in her hand and her red hair tumbles around her face, shielding her gaze from his.  But he knows her, knows her better than anyone.

He can see the curiosity in every line of her silhouette.  Can see the consideration.

And the fear.

It’s something he understands.  

He can still hear the girl’s screams.  

Can still feel her straining against him, against Steve.  

She’s strong-not as strong as some he used to know and certainly not stronger than himself and Natasha-but she’s strong nonetheless.  

He wonders how long she has been active.  

 _How_ she’s active.

The Red Room is a ghost, a long lost memory of a long lost empire.  

And yet…

“Novokov may have recruited her before we brought him down,” Natasha murmurs, almost too soft for him to hear and he glances at her with a frown.

“She’s not Leo’s style,” he mutters as he rises slowly and moves towards the water pitcher someone, Sharon, probably, left behind along with two glasses and he pours himself a measure before taking a sip.   

Natasha crosses her legs and tosses her hair, a small smile on her face as she watches him stall and he sighs into his glass.  “Tesla, then.  She always knew the best way to hurt you,” she says quietly as he sets the glass down and leans heavily against the sink, his head lowered and his teeth gritted against the suspicions he’s about to voice.

“I need to talk to Fury.  I can’t believe the old bastard didn’t know about her.  He knew about the Electric Ghost, knew about Tesla, before we did after all.  He might-he might have known about her,” he mutters to no one and before she can stop him, he’s slipping from the room and she’s left to keep watch on the broken child sleeping peacefully once more beside her.

“James,” she sighs sadly as the machines measuring their nightmarish surprise’s vitals breathe and beep in the silence.  “What are you going to do?”

She does not see the girl’s fingers twitch or see her eyelids flutter.  

After a long moment, when James does not return to the room, she sags back into her chair and once more props her chin in her hand; her hooded gaze never leaves the still figure upon the bed and the only sign that she is irritated is the slight jiggle of her foot.

She waits.

She waits for the bomb before her to detonate.

**

The woman knows how to fix her, that she’s certain of.  

She watches her, through her downswept eyelashes and despite herself she wonders.

What does this woman mean to the man with the cold brown eyes and metal fingers?

Why is she so _important?_

Words spill through her mind, in a thousand different languages and it feels as if the puzzle pieces of her sanity are too jagged to fit together.  It feels as if she is broken.

She keeps still and controls her breathing.

She watches.

Listens to the ticking of time passing in the back of her skull.

She waits.   

After several long minutes her muscles begin to tense, her back arching subtly against the straps holding her down and she holds her breath.  She will break the straps, shatter the metal holding her and she will _destroy_ the woman sitting at her side.

She will destroy her and find a way to complete her mission.  

She will-

“You’re not going to be able to break those straps, soldier,” the woman murmurs suddenly and she stills, her eyes flashing open in shock.  

The woman smiles, a slight uplift of her lips that does nothing to erase the cold calculation in her eyes and she knows then.

Knows that the men she faced however long ago may have been stronger than her, but this woman.

This woman is the deadliest.

She stops straining against the straps and swallows back the curse climbing her throat.  “Who-who are you?” she asks, in only slightly accented English.  

Her handler would have been proud of that.  

He would have smiled.

The woman’s head cocks and red hair tumbles free of her ear to spill across her shoulder.  Her green eyes narrow a bit and she chuckles quietly to herself.  

“I should ask you the same,” she says as she stands and moves towards the hard bed.  Her movements are smooth, controlled.  

Deadly.  

She moves like the commanders, like the instructors the girl fought so hard to please.  

She moves like a ghost.  

She does not answer the woman with the green eyes and curly red hair.  

She does not betray her commanders.

The woman sighs and folds her arms along the heavy steel bars of the bed.  “My name is Natasha,” she says quietly, her eyes blank and her voice even.  It is not a surrendering.  It is a tease.  A carrot dangled before her.

The girl understands this.

She understands but in the end…

This woman moves like the men who trained her.  

She swallows her fear and whispers, “My handler called me Roza.”  

This is a surrender, a tiny breach in her walls and for the first time since her sanity crumbled and the jagged pieces of her mind shattered for good, she feels relief.  

The woman, Natasha, smiles and rests her chin on her folded hands.  “Roza,” she says softly, her eyes finally warming with her smile.  “That is a lovely name.  It suits you.”

Roza smiles slightly, a small tremble in her chin as her mind struggles with failed commands and broken memories.  Her hands shake in her bonds and she can feel herself breaking but she does not look away from Natasha’s green eyes.  

She does not let that go.  

Because somehow...she finds love in that gaze.  

Love and understanding.

It is something she has never seen before in her long life.  

“ _Help me_ ,” she chokes as her body finally betrays her, betrays her for betraying her country and her commanders.  “ _Please_ , Natasha, please _help me._ ”  

In the distance she hears shouting once more, can hear Natasha shouting for help, for doctors, for someone named James.  But her voice is small, small amidst the static in her mind and she whimpers as her body shreds and shakes apart all around her.  

Hands once more hold her, but they are gentle.  

Natasha’s, Roza realizes, as the woman murmurs to her in Russian.  Tells her to hold on, to breathe, to fight the programming.  To remember her name.  To remember who she was before they broke her.

To remember.

But Roza-Soldat-the girl-cannot remember anything before the mission.

Cannot remember anything but her handler’s grey eyes and his voice murmuring as he slipped the shackles from her wrist and tugged her hood up over her head, _What are you going to do, child?_

She has never found the answer for him.  She has simply fought and killed and slept.

She has simply done what she is supposed to.

Without question.

Without thought.  

“I’ll fix you,” Natasha whispers in her ear as someone slides a needle in her arm and wipes the froth from her chin.  “I’ll find a way to fix you Roza.  My daughter.”

That is the last thing Roza hears before the clock in her mind ticks down to zero.  

Static erupts behind her eyes and a high-pitched whining fills her ears as her body finally collapses against the programming the men who made her gave her before sending her on this disastrous mission.  

“No,” she whispers just once, through the blood filling her mouth and the pain gripping her body and she does not know which language she uses to deny Natasha’s worthless promise.  

It does not matter in the end.

There’s nothing left to fix.

**

Natalia Romanova had a daughter.  

There was a time, before the Red Room had entirely broken her, that she was normal.  A normal woman, with normal loves and a normal life.

There was a man, a noble man-a soldier, a pilot-she was promised to.  She did not particularly _love_ this man, did not particularly _care_ for him.  But he was a man.  And he loved to watch her dance.  

For Natalia that was all she needed.  

Someone to tell her she was beautiful.  Someone to hold her and fight for her.  

And then _he_ came.  

The Winter Soldier.

And Natalia knew then.  

Knew what it was to love.

And oh, how she loved him.  With her entire being.  

“Call her Roza, please,” she begs over and over on the day they take her child from her and prepare to create their greatest weapon.  “Please, call her Roza, so she’ll know she is loved.”  

The men who create her out of blood and gunpowder simply turn their backs on her and slip poison in her veins.  She never sees her daughter again, never gets another chance to hold her but it’s all right in the end.

They make sure she remembers none of it.  

Not the brat she should never have borne.  

Not the man she married out of duty and not love.

And not the man she actually loved with her whole heart.  

She simply remembered what she was meant to remember.

And it had nothing at all to do with love.  

“Roza,” she whispers as the poison washes through her veins and burns her, burns her and breaks her and _murders_ her.  “Roza, I am sorry…”

When she wakes there is nothing left of her.

Nothing at all.

Just the Black Widow.

The Red Room’s greatest toy.  

A monster.

 

Natasha Romanoff was told over and over that she could not have children-that something the Department had done to her had rendered her infertile.  

It wasn’t something she cried about really.  

Or thought about.  

She did not have time for children.  

She was the Black Widow.  She was an assassin, a spy, a hero.

A child was the last thing she needed.  

“Did you know about her Nick?” she asks on the night hers and James’ past emerges from the shadows to destroy them.  Fury doesn’t look at her, but continues reading the file they’ve started putting together on the last of the Red Room’s operatives.  It’s not very conclusive, which has frustrated them all but it is enough.  For now.   

She slams her fist down on the desk that stands between them and leans into his face, hissing as she does, “ _Did you know about Roza?_ ”

He looks up at that and scowls.  “‘Roza’?” he repeats.  “That th-girl has a name?”

Natasha straightens carefully at the scripted surprise in his voice, her movements controlled and so very deadly.  “You did,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion and her eyes cold and blank.  “You knew about her-probably from the very beginning.  Through Tesla and Leo and Rodchenko. Through _me_.”  She bites out that last, the very recent pain of having herself erased and recreated and lost still too fresh and he doesn’t even flinch.  

His remaining eye bears nothing but cold empathy she does not find reassuring; she stands before him, her back straight and her arms stiff at her sides and tries desperately to keep from screaming.  

Tries to keep from losing what little faith she had in him once upon a time.

He doesn’t deny any of it, doesn’t deny finding the girl, doesn’t deny finding some way to send her here.  

She knows he’s behind her sudden appearance, after all of this time and this more than anything shatters her old trust.  

Shatters _everything_ she once held with this man.

“You bastard,” she whispers as she fades into the shadows filling his office and goes in search of the one person in the world who can save her.  

Save her and the girl currently lying in a medicated-coma deep in the bowels of medical.

She finds him alone, in the empty gym just a floor below medical.  

The broken remains of several punching bags surround him but he shows no sign of slowing down.

Of stopping.

Of listening.  

“James.”  

He doesn’t look at her, simply continues pounding his fists into the stiff canvas of the bag he’s working and she sighs. “James, we have to talk about this.”

The metal of his left arm flashes in the cold fluorescent lighting of the gym and she rolls her eyes when the bag explodes in a shower of sand.  His shoulders rise and fall with the heavy breaths he takes and sweat drips from his hair down his neck and along his spine.  He doesn’t say a word, simply breathes deeply and flexes his fingers.

Metal sighs.

She presses her palm to his and tangles her fingers between his own.  “Please, talk to me,” she whispers as she brings his hand to her lips.  She kisses each metal digit, revelling absently in the taste of him, in the touch of cold metal on her lips, the faint breath of hydraulics brushing her cheeks.  

This is something she has grown so very used to, something she has longed to feel on so many cold, lonely nights.  

 _I never want to lose this again,_ she thinks as he bows his head, pressing his forehead to hers and she smiles slightly when he sighs.

“I don’t want to talk about it-her,” he whispers, his breath ruffling her hair and she knows then.  Understands why he has refused to talk about Roza in the days since her failed assassination attempt on him.

“You’re scared of the memories,” she says quietly.  Her words are not accusatory.  Not judgemental.  They simply are.  

She knows what it’s like to be erased, erased and replaced constantly.  She knows the overlap, the rigid pain of disjointed memories trying to fit together.  

She knows what it’s like to be unmade, just to be knitted back together into something else.  Something else entirely.

He nods, just slightly and sighs once more.  

“I made her, Natalia, I made her,” he whispers as she runs her hands up his arms to clasp the back of her skull.  “She’s my mistake.”

She smiles as she presses her cheek to his and her eyelashes are a dark wave in the hollows of her eyes.  “She’s no more a mistake than you and I, James.  She’s a child that’s lost her way, just like we had all those years ago.  You don’t have to bear her history alone.  It takes two afterall,” she murmurs with a soft laugh and gentle kiss to the downturned corner of his mouth as she takes a step back from him, her fingers still tangled in his.  “It takes two to make one.”  

He barks out a shocked laugh at that as she leads him towards the boxing ring, her green eyes sparkling with some sort of dark humor he thinks he should be familiar with.

It’s like looking through a foggy window, trying to remember everything there is about her.  About them.

And sometimes he doesn’t like what he sees.

But today…

“We have to decide what we’re going to do with her,” he sighs as she pulls him down into her arms, down across the rough canvas of the ring.  His hair tumbles into his eyes as he settles between her legs, their bodies melding together as if they were made for the other’s.

Which in some ways…

“We have to give her a better life, James,” she sighs to the ceiling as he trails his lips down her body, his fingers skillfully undressing her and this, this is heaven.  

He sighs and rests his forehead against her belly, against the tight muscles trembling there and his warm breath washes over her suddenly revealed skin.  She arches a bit at that, a faint groan slipping her lips and he smiles despite himself.

“Yes, I know that Natalia,” he whispers.  “But what kind of life?”

She stills and tangles her fingers in his hair, pulling his head up gently so she can smile at him. “The kind of life that will actually make sense, James,” she says as she presses a kiss to his lips and wraps her legs around his waist.  “One that won’t give her nightmares.”   

He smiles at that, pained understanding in his eyes and she kisses him once more.  “We’ll give her a good life,” he murmurs into her skin as she holds him and it’s like a promise, those words.

The words a parent whispers over a blanket shrouded child.

And they realize in that moment.

Realize that they are about the become parents.

It is a terrifying thought.

But not, as well.

“I love you James,” she whispers in Russian and that is a promise too.  

Suddenly his mind doesn’t feel so broken anymore, so jagged around the edges.  

Suddenly he feels…

“I love you too, Natalia,” he whispers back as she holds him and he kisses her silky skin.  “I love you too…”

**

Sunlight streams through the hospital window on the morning she wakes up after her accident, streams and beats down all around her.  

It blinds her and warms her like nothing else but it takes her a long moment to remember what happened.  

Where she is.  

 _Who_ she is.

“Rosalie?”  

She jumps at the soft voice coming from the doorway and her hands tighten desperately within the thin hospital bed sheets.  

For a moment...for a single moment she feels like she is hidden in shadow, that there is something she has forgotten to do, that she is _missing_ something.

The moment passes when she finally notices who stands in the doorway and a shaky smile appears on her face.

“Mom?” she whispers as her mother slips into the room to lean against the bed railing.  “Where am I?”

Her mother, Natasha (Natalia, only to her father), smiles and strokes the back of her hand gently.  “You’re at St. Francis’, Rosie,” she says, her voice soft and her eyes shadowed.  “Do you remember what happened?  Why you’re here?”

Rose frowns-for some reason it seems her mother is fishing, waiting for her to reveal something important-something Rose really doesn’t know.

“Mom, I,” she begins, a protest on her lips and her voice still ragged. Why is her mother fishing? Why the shadowed worry in her eyes?  Why the tenseness in the way she’s standing?

Why... _any_ of this.  

She tries to remember how she ended up in the hospital.

_A balcony._

“I was dancing,” she murmurs, her eyes closing as she relaxes against her pillows and her mother’s hand rests beside her hip, not quite touching.  

_Balancing on a balcony, looking down at the stars._

_Looking down at stars?_

The memory that isn’t quite a memory fades as she forces her mind back to the task at hand.  Back to remember what happened to her-why she’s here in the hospital.  She hears the song she was dancing to, the one from the children’s movie she always loved as a girl, because it was about a Russian princess who lost her memory and went on an adventure with a handsome boy to reclaim it.  

She was dancing to the song, just practicing before the rest of her troupe arrived.  

It was her favorite song, even if it was not sung in Russian or even with a trace of an accent.  

Her father would sometimes sing it to her, when she curled up in his lap at night; he would sing it in Russian, no trace of his Brooklyn accent to be found and it was always so wonderful when he did.

She always thought her mother looked a bit like the princess...

She was spinning last night.

_Spinning into a wall, head first, metal hand cold around her neck._

She was spinning at the climax of the song, her arms raised her hair loose around her face when-

“I fell,” she sighs and her eyes open slowly.  

It feels, for a moment that her mind is in two different places, that a tiny corner is still locked in darkness.  She wonders if she should ask about it.

She wonders if she’s broken.

Her mother’s eyes narrow slightly and her fingers are gentle when she strokes hair off of Rose’s forehead.  “How did you fall, Rose?” she asks, her voice firm.  There is grim resolution in her eyes, almost as if, if Rose doesn’t answer correctly, she is prepared to do something drastic.  

Something horrible.

Rose swallows and shifts ever so much away from her mother’s hand, from those cold emerald green eyes she didn’t inherit.  

“Mom, I,” she stammers, her voice catching as she watches her mother’s face stiffen and cold calculation enter her gaze.  “I-I fell...Where’s Dad?”

Her mother’s hand is firm on her wrist and she leans into her as she says, too gently, “Tell me how you fell Rose.  Tell me, _please._ ”

Tears prick Rose’s eyes and finally, the rest of it comes to her.  Memories, varied and colorful and so very not shadowed, wash over her and it’s almost as if a dam has broken in her mind.  Almost as if her entire life is crashing down around her, trying to come to the forefront.

Almost as if her subconscious is seeking to prove that she really is her.

That she really is Rosalie Barnes, daughter of Natasha Romanoff and James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes of 1944 E. Franklin St., Brooklyn, New York, New York.  That she’s a Junior at NYU, studying dance and political science.  That she’s the goddaughter of Steve Rogers and James Howlett.  That she’s the kid who poked Nick Fury in the eye with a pencil (the good eye) and called him a stinky fart face and-

“Did I really poke Nick Fury in the eye when I was five?” she whispers suddenly, as the onslaught of memories barrel and flock around the edges of her mind and she doesn’t realize she’s been hiding behind her hands for the past five minutes until she lowers them to gaze at her mother.  Who’s watching her carefully, but decidedly less nervously.  

Natasha laughs, softly and passes a hand over her eyes.  

“Oh god, _James_ ,” she murmurs and Rose doesn’t miss the blatant relief she hears in her mother’s voice.  Or the slight tremble of her fingers.  She wonders briefly why her mother breathed her father’s name like a curse but doesn’t think long on it.

Rose reaches out to press the pads of her own fingers lightly to the back of her mother’s hand, a part of her almost afraid to touch, and finally the memories subside.  They fall to the back of her mind where they belong, a silent comfort, telling her exactly who and what she is.

_Rosalie Barnes.  The daughter of heroes._

Or something pretty damn close to heroes.  

“I tripped over my boombox last night,” she says and Natasha’s hand falls back to the blankets covering her, falls back to press against her hip.  Daughter smiles sheepishly up at mother and sighs.  “I was going too fast, pushing myself to spin faster and faster and faster and the next thing I know is I’m off balance and I tripped over the damn stereo and into the bar.”

Her fingers rise to her temple, where a dull ache lurks and she presses lightly.  A burst of pain greets her touch and she winces as a wave of nausea takes her.   

“Stupid really-you would think with us as parents you’d be a little more graceful.”

The sound of her father’s voice from the doorway surprises her and she gasps.  For a moment her fingers twitch, almost as if they’re missing something-something essential pressed tightly to her palm-but then the feeling is gone and she’s laughing.

“Shut up Dad,” she says as he eases into the room and perches on her bed, right by her feet.  His brown eyes, intense and dark as ever, never leave her face and she does not miss the calculation in his gaze either.  

“I’m fine, really,” she whispers weakly as a still silence falls over her room and her parents continue watching her too closely.  “I’m _fine_ ,” she finishes firmly, resolution in her tone and a pool of memories to back her up.  “Stop worrying.”

Her father smiles and presses the cool metal fingers of his left hand to her ankle.  “I’ll always worry about you,” he says and she can’t help but think, as her parents share a glance, that there’s dual meaning to his words.  

But she doesn’t mention it.  

Doesn’t question it.

Because in all honesty...her head is killing her.

And all she wants to do is sleep.

“Can you sing that song, Dad?” she asks softly as her mother fiddles with the blankets covering her and her father’s fingers tap restlessly against her feet.  “The one from that movie about the lost Russian princess?”  

His fingers still and a dangerous glare flashes in her mother’s direction-Natasha smiles smugly at him but he doesn’t say a word.  

Simply sighs and rests his head in his palm.

“The irony of this whole situation is not lost on me,” he growls to himself but when Natasha kicks him and Rose’s eyes begin to glaze, he finally begins to hum, a little off tune.  Then, as she starts to fall into a deep sleep, he murmurs, _Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember-I’m going to kill you Natalia._ Anastasia _, really?  You are so sick and wrong._

“Stop fighting you two,” she slurs sleepily, already mostly gone and her mother’s fingers are gentle on her forehead and sleep finally takes her.  

 _I thought it was appropriate, considering the rumors about me and my family and_ her _,_ Natasha murmurs as the doors close silently behind them and Rose sleeps in her hospital bed.  

The sound of the hydraulic locks falling into place is loud in the hallway of the Hellicarrier Med Bay (definitely not St. Francis-Fury’s idea) and both Natasha and Bucky still as the echoes fade away.

“Okay,” he breathes as she starts to tremble and the team of psychologists and medics begin to drift from the observation room looking onto “Rose’s” hospital bed.  “That was scary.  She was speaking Russian the entire time, Nat.”  

Natasha doesn’t say anything.

Simply walks into the observation room to confront the remaining observer.  

“Tell me everything we need to know about her Fury,” she hisses as she steps into his space and wraps her fingers around his shirt collars.  “ _Everything_ and don’t hold back.”  She’s tiny, compared to the two men with her but she’s the Black Widow.

Fury tells her everything.

Everything, including a trigger.

Что вы собираетесь делать?

_What are you going to do?_

**

There’s a case file on the subject dubbed the Red Soldier.  

Nick Fury keeps it locked up in his desk, amongst a few others; they’re the ones he knows he’ll have to refer back to every now and then, over the years.  So he keeps them close.

He doesn’t know that there are copies of all three.  

He doesn’t know that all three sit in a bedside table of the master bedroom of a quaint three bedroom Brooklyn apartment.  

If he knew he’d probably have an aneurysm.

Not that James Barnes cares that much.

The papers whisper through his fingers one night as he sits on the floor beside his and Natasha’s empty bed.  The beer bottle clicking against the cool hardwood floor and those papers are the only sound in the room but every sense is sharp, despite the alcohol warming his blood and the late hour.  

He tries not to think about how, since they brought Rose home a month ago, he spends most of his nights waiting for a knife to press against his throat.  

He still remembers the blank brown eyes of the shadowed ghost his daughter had once been gazing at him out of the shadows of his room in the Tower.  Still remembers her gun turning in his direction as she murmured good-bye in Russian.  

He still remembers her standing on the ledge, balancing precariously against the wind and talking about the stars.

He still remembers what it feels like to be broken.

He studies her file-and his and Natasha’s-over and over, looking for clues, studying triggers, praying that one day (when that day comes) he’ll be able to save his daughter.  

_The agent, now neutralized and in the care of capable handlers with expansive experience in this field, has experienced much mental trauma and washing. It is believed by SHIELD medics and the science division, that a relapse will occur._

_When, is not certain._

_Further study is recommended._

_Protection is recommended for handlers._

_Shoot-to-kill order in place should relapse occur._

“Jesus,” he sighs as he tosses back the last of the beer and turns the last page in the file.  This is the page he dreads and loves in equal measure.  

The one he turns to at the end of every perusal of this nightmare file folder and smiles softly down at.

It’s a picture of Roza- _the_ Roza-on the night she came to kill him.  He’s not sure how Fury managed to track down this photo.  It’s a still from a security camera but considering where it came from it’s actually a good quality image.

It’s a picture of Roza-before she became Rose, before they spent a month of her being in a coma and undergoing massive wipes and neural refigurings-and she’s standing on the ledge of Stark Tower.  Every line of her body says lethal killing machine.  Every strand of hair blowing free of her deep hood calls to mind the cold metal taste of adrenaline in the back of his throat.

She’s turned towards him in the picture, just a profile and he can see clearly her eye and the faint smile curling her lips.  Her red hair streams like a banner around her face and she looks so much like Natasha in that moment he wonders how he never knew who and what she was.  

The sound of a door opening quietly from down the hall catches his attention at that moment and as he looks up he sees the faint golden light of the living room lamp click on.  He hesitates, just for a moment, part of him hoping it’s just Natasha returned early from her mission in Sarajevo.

And then he hears the balcony doors sweep open and his heart freezes.  

“Rose.”  

His voice is gentle, almost lost in the sweeping winds rushing around the balcony.  He barely remembers rushing here after hearing the doors open-barely remembers the ten or so steps it takes to get from his bedroom to the living room.

He moves like someone in a waking nightmare and all he hears is his heart beating in his ears.

She doesn’t turn to look at him.  

She’s not standing on the ledge and for that he is thankful.  

“Rose,” he says as he takes a slow step towards her, his mind spinning as Fury’s written words vibrate through his skull.   _Shoot to kill._  “Is everything all right?”

_It’s not._

_Shoot to kill._

_Can I do this?_

His thoughts are wild-are not composed and if Natasha only knew she’d probably tease him mercilessly about that.

Or maybe not.

“Why do I keep seeing them?” she asks suddenly and he tries not to be relieved at the sanity in her voice.  She doesn’t sound like someone who is cracking.

She sounds like someone who has been faced with a puzzle over-and-over and no matter how hard they try, they can never finish it.

There’s always a piece missing.

“See who?” he asks as he comes up beside her and leans casually against the cement railing of the balcony.  He tries not to shiver in the cool wind whipping around them and frowns at the sight of her in nothing but one of Steve’s too-big t-shirts and a pair of Carol’s running shorts.  She doesn’t show any sign of being cold, though, and he wonders if, on a cellular level, she just can’t feel it.

Or if she’s too focused inward to even notice what’s going on outward.

She glances at him, the look on her face so similar to Natasha’s irritated expression his skin bumps and she sighs.  “Not _who_ Dad,” she mutters quietly and she leans heavily on her palms, spreading her fingers as if hoping to ground herself.  “ _What._  The stars.”

Her voice is puzzled, as bewildered as a child’s when asking why the sky is blue and he glances down in hopes of seeing what she sees.

There are a few cars on their Brooklyn street, a few cellphones glowing as their owners text and talk to loved ones on their way home from wherever.  He’s quiet for a moment, trying to think of what to say but she beats him.

“I dream that I’m looking _down_ at stars Dad, but I’m not flying or anything.  I’m just...waiting,” she says, her voice still puzzled but he can sense the fear she’s feeling, the worry.

The worry that there’s something wrong.

Something _broken_ in her mind _._

“Waiting for what?” he asks, and he tries not to wish for Natasha.  Tries to keep from shivering.

His fingers spread, the cool metal of them straining towards hers, and neither notice as she tangles her fingers between his.  “Waiting for what Rose?” he asks, more forcefully this time and she sighs.

“I don’t know,” she groans as she turns towards him and tucks some hair behind her ear.  “God this is ridiculous.”

Her brown eyes, the same shade and shape of his, crinkle worriedly as he frowns down at the cars below them and doesn’t say a word.  

“You know,” he says after a while, his voice far gentler than she’s ever heard it-even when he speaks in Russian to her mother-”I never wanted children.”  

He smiles, his lips curling in a crooked grin she shares, and runs his fingers through his wind-blown hair.  “I always thought-hoped really-it’d be Steve who got the girl and the two kids and the white picket fence you know. I just, never had the mentality to raise a family-to be the guy who’d chase the monsters away at night and to work a nine to five. I never thought…”  

He sighs and reaches out to stroke the back of his knuckles down her cheek.

“I never thought I’d make that great of a parent Rose,” he finishes with a shrug and another flash of that grin her mother always claimed made him look like a mischievous five year old about to get into some sort of trouble.  

She hesitates, something holding her back for a moment-that same darkness that had urged her to come to this balcony maybe-and then, before either of them can stop her, she wraps her arms around his neck and tucks her head tightly into his shoulder.  After a moment, his arms rise to clasp her tightly to his chest and she shivers at the feel of metal on her bare skin.  

“You’re my Dad,” she mutters into his chest as he buries his face in her hair and holds her safely out of the cool wind whipping down around him.  “You’re always here, when I wake up.”  

“Thank you.”  

His arms tighten around her and as they rock gently out there on the balcony of their Brooklyn apartment, he tries to not think of the pistol resting in his bedside table, beneath several files marked with Nicholas Fury’s name.  

He closes his eyes and for a long moment it seems like everything will be fine.

That everything will be _normal._

But his last name is Barnes.  

Maybe he’s cursed or maybe it’s just the way his genetics worked out.

Either way…

He never wanted children.

And yet...here he is.

“You’re welcome, Rose,” he whispers into his daughter’s hair and he tries to not think of how her hair always smells like gunpowder and snow.

Of the Motherland’s great turning machinations.

Of a constant cycle of death and rebirth. 

He just focuses on her slender body in his arms.

And that is what being a father truly means, he thinks. 

Just holding his daughter.

And swearing to her that he will always protect her.  Until the end comes for one or the other. 

He swears in that moment, as he rests his chin in her hair-the same shade as her mother’s-and her arms lock around his waist.  He swears…

 _I will not be the one to pick up that gun, Roza.  I swear to you,_ soldat.    

“I love you Rose,” he whispers into the chilly wind whipping unnoticed around them. 

“ _M_ _oya zhestokiy doch’.”_

 

 


End file.
